Topology of horocycles on geometrically finite nonpositively curved surfaces

Abstract

We study the closure of horocycles on rank 1 nonpositively curved surfaces with finitely generated fundamental group. Each horocycle is closed or dense on a certain subset of the unit tangent bundle. In fact, we classify each half-horocycle in terms of the associated geodesic rays. We also determine the nonwandering set of the horocyclic flow and characterize the surfaces admitting a minimal set for this flow.